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Introduction - general thoughts 😑

• Though your work speaks for itself, it is useful, even necessary, to be able to tell others about your work;

  • Most fans & audiences will need to access your thoughts through your use of language. Often, technical and conceptual meaning of the work cannot be simply grasped from looking at an artwork or a design/media projects; people need assistance.

  • Most curators, employers, companies, institutions, or people you network with also will likely want to hear your thoughts about either your process or what the work means in your understanding;

  • People who can talk or write well about their own work leave a stronger impression, appear more confident, intelligent, and so on. (I don’t make the rules.)

  • The only way most people can access your work, your development process, what it meant to you, and so on, is very often through the smol 300 - 500 words tag you put next to it. 😵‍💫 I know it feels unfair but it is what it is.

    

• Language is a tool for expressing thoughts;

• Language is a technology for creation of meaning;

• It is a craft; it is also a manipulation tool with which you can make people think thoughts you want them to think and feel things you want them to feel.

There is no standard aesthetic or style of language that would be universally appealing. Focus on whether it meats your standards for what is good.

• Standardised formulas can work if you have already clarified your thoughts about what you want to say, and you are looking for a place to start about how to shape / format them.
  • Also, sometimes there are requirements we have to meet, so.
  • ‘Clear’ communication of ideas is not all there is to communication. Sure, there has to be basic coherence but we are not writing an airport book for ‘how to start a business in 12 days.’ Really, you should focus on your writing (or talking) being engaging & interesting so that people wanna read you / listen to you.
• Emulate your idols. We learn through imitation. We find our own voice through copying then deviating from the work of those we admire. Learning through imitation is better than following a standardized formula.
  • You know what is good but you haven’t practiced enough yet to sound like the people you admire.

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Exercises: two for thinking; one for writing.

I am not **the writing center so I am also here to talk about something else also.

How to enrich your ability to talk about your work in a way that resonates philosophically, culturally, socially, politically?

As IMA graduates, whether you work in arts or industry or academia or anywhere else, we want your work to shine not only on a technical level, but also on its ability to relate to pressing concerns in society, to reflect on questions meaningful to humanity, to pick up intellectual and aesthetic traditions of artists, thinkers, designers, makers before you.

We want you to be able to stand in front of you work and talk about it interestingly, which often means relating it to issues that people care about, or issues that you will make them care about and take an interest in.

👁️ Exercise: Intro Your Work 👁️

Roleplay, I am standing in front of my work at the IMA show and someone comes over to ask me ‘what this is’ and what do I do?

I am going to use Leah’s work as an example because I supervised her and I showed you this piece before.

https://leahbian.net/animagine